With the rapidly increasing use of the Internet, Internet privacy is of increasing concern. Various owners of World Wide Web (Web) sites have different policies regarding the collection and use of an individual's private information. For example, one Internet merchant may share an individual's address, telephone number, and other personal information without asking the individual. Another Internet merchant may not sell any of the individual's personal information without asking.
Mobile data privacy will be a growing concern in the future as well. The FCC is requiring future mobile devices to be able to determine their geographic locations. This may be an item that the user does not wish to share with others.
A Web consortium recognized the importance of Internet privacy and generated a protocol for Internet products such as Internet browsers. The protocol provides Internet related companies with guidelines for privacy issues. The protocol is referred to in the art as Platform for Privacy Preferences or P3P.
P3P enables Web sites to specify their personal data use and disclosure practices and enables Web users to specify their expectations concerning personal data disclosure practices. Additionally, P3P provides software user agents with the ability to undertake negotiation, on behalf of the parties, in order to reach an agreement concerning the exchange of data between the parties. In other words, P3P provides a means whereby individuals can have sufficient information that he or she can make an informed decision regarding whether to permit use of their personal data or decline further use of that data. Furthermore, that decision can be delegated to the software user agent that is acting on behalf of the individual.
After reviewing the privacy policy of a Web site owner, the individual can accept or reject that policy based on his or her own preferences about sharing personally identifiable information with the Web site. This process may be automated by the Web site sending an extensible mark-up language (XML) file that asserts the policy of that particular Web site and is matched with the privacy preferences configured in the browser or other software product. This can be accomplished using capabilities that are well known in the art such as A P3P Preferences Exchange Language (APPEL).
Using this rules-based language, a user can express his or her preferences in a set of preference-rules called a ruleset. The ruleset is then used by a software agent to make automated or semi-automated decisions regarding the acceptability of machine-readable privacy policies from P3P enabled Web sites.
If the individual prefers to review the policy manually, they must request a download of the policy [via the P3P software agent or browser]. Typically, privacy policies are long and detailed and may consist of multiple paragraphs in different fonts.
A wireless mobile station (e.g., personal digital assistant, mobile telephone, data handset) user who is accessing a Web site is limited in reviewing a privacy policy manually. A policy might be difficult to read on a mobile device with a small screen. There is a resulting need for a way to review privacy policies on mobile devices.